Arnold Schwarzenegger Is President of 12 Percent of Us

As California responds to another budget crunch, look back at this profile from last year of Schwarzenegger in crisis mode. The only way he has changed since he became governor is that he's gotten even bigger. As big as his huge, embattled, impossible state. Big enough to lead the nation into a new kind of politics.

It was funny. What Arnold said at the meeting of the advocates -- it was funny. He didn't laugh; he hardly ever does when he says something funny. He only laughs when someone says something funny to him, and then he opens that big androidal mouth, and you feel a little bit like a lion tamer, if you're close enough -- you're in the position of counting on his goodwill. He likes people who make him laugh. But because he doesn't laugh at his own jokes, you can't be sure if he's joking or not. That's the way it was at the meeting of the advocates. He didn't laugh and neither did they. But that doesn't mean what he said wasn't funny. It had to be, or else he never would have gotten away with it.

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What happened was that he was making his way around the conference table in his big conference room. He was shaking hands. He was shaking the hand of each of the advocates who'd come to the meeting. This wasn't unusual -- he's done this at every meeting he's ever had in the conference room. It's his method. I mean, it's not like he doesn't know who he is in relation to them -- not like he doesn't know that they know who he is. And so he tries to give each of them what they came for, the Arnold experience. Of course, to some extent he gives them the Arnold experience the instant he walks in the room or opens his mouth -- his face and his body and his voice are that recognizable. But then, being Arnold, he tries to give them what they want, and then mess with their expectations at the same time. And so, at the meeting of the advocates he took his walk around the table, and when he came upon a woman wearing a nice scarf, he took it in his hand. I mean, the woman is meeting Arnold Schwarzenegger for the first time, and he takes her scarf in his hand, feels it, drapes it over his thick fingers, and lets it drop. Then he says, "Cashmere -- some rich people here."

And then he keeps going around the table, but you and everyone else in the room -- the advocates -- have just had your Arnold experience, which in part is the experience of saying to yourself, Did he really just say that? Because you see, Arnold was having a lot of meetings that week in the conference room. He was having meetings with law enforcement, he was having meetings with big-city mayors, he was having meetings with people who deliver health-care services to Californians on public assistance. He was having so many meetings that his staff resorted to a kind of shorthand when they were describing his schedule and took to calling the people who were coming to his Tuesday two o'clock "the advocates" without ever saying what they were advocating. Turns out they were advocates for the poor. Turns out they had arrived at the meeting deathly afraid of getting screwed, since the subject of the meeting -- the subject of all his meetings that week -- was the cutting he was going to have to do as a result of California's historic budget deficit. And yet what Arnold does when he comes upon the woman wearing the nice scarf is stop and touch it, and what he says to the advocates deathly afraid of getting screwed is, "Cashmere -- some rich people here." And he, the richest person in the room by many orders of magnitude, the most famous and most powerful person in the room by many more orders of magnitude than even that, gets away with it.

It's not just because what he said is funny, either, though everyone in the room seems aware that it is, without laughing. And it's not just because it's Arnold being Arnold, delivering the Arnold experience. And it's not just because he's giving the advocates shit, even though getting shit from Arnold is a major component of the Arnold experience. Hell, it's not even because once he sits down in his big burgundy leather chair at the head of the table and folds his hands in front of him, he levels with them right away, and says, yes, poor people are going to get screwed -- but equitably, 10 percent across the board of every state agency: "Democrats are getting screwed, Republicans are getting screwed, we're all getting screwed." No, the real reason he gets away with it -- the reason he gets away with everything and might yet get away with a budget that's $14 billion in the red -- is that, well, he asked.

He asked the advocates to come to the capitol and sit in the conference room and get the full Arnold experience, just as he asked law enforcement and the big-city mayors and the people who provide health care for Californians on public assistance, just as he asked everyone the week he finally confirmed that he was going to declare a state of fiscal emergency for the state he governs. And no governor had ever done that before. No one had ever called everyone who was going to be affected by budget cuts to tell them how they were going to be affected by budget cuts. That's what they all said, anyway, after he asked for their input, after he told them they were getting screwed. They all said that what he was doing was unprecedented and that they were grateful for it. And it's hard to say what was more amazing -- the fact that this, such a simple, such a human idea, had never been tried before or that the person who did finally try it was Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He's been governor of California for four years. That's sort of amazing in itself, considering that there was a time, recently, when the prospect of him running the most populous state in the union seemed a kind of comment on the absurdity and frivolity of American politics. And yet, even as most of us are still absorbing the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of California, Arnold has had this whole career as governor of California, complete with a big early run of legislative victories, a huge and consummate defeat, a bottoming out in the polls, then a comeback and a reelection and a record of accomplishment that's embarrassing -- and that's to a degree meant to be embarrassing -- to his equivalent in Washington, D.C. And the way that he's been able to do these things has been by developing a style of politics that may prove to be his lasting legacy, beyond the bills he's been able to push through the California legislature. We've been so desperate for a new politics -- who would have ever thought that one of its sources would be the governor's office in California? Who would have ever thought it would be him?

I mean, okay, he's rich, sure. And he's famous, sure. And he's married into the Kennedy clan by way of Maria Shriver, sure. And he can't be elected president, because of the flaw in the Constitution barring the office to nonnatives, and therefore he doesn't have to give a shit, sure. He's still Arnold -- and there's no way that anyone could have predicted that being Arnold would translate into being the kind of governor and the kind of politician he's been, especially since the thing everyone agrees on is that he's always Arnold, all the time. His persona has always been this close to being absurd, and yet he's been able to make use of it -- the persona and its presumed proximity to absurdity, both -- as a governor just as well as he was able to make use of it as a bodybuilder and as a movie star. Indeed, most people thought that he was using the governorship in order to rise above his persona, when in fact he was using his persona to rise above the governorship. He hasn't had to be less of himself -- less, well, Arnold -- in response to the realities of politics, though that's what some people like to think; he hasn't had to be more, either. He's simply had to prove that this person and persona he created long ago was a more expansive notion than anyone thought possible, except himself. It's an amazing American story in general, and an amazing immigrant story in particular, especially now, as he faces another crisis and is called upon not to reinvent himself, but rather to be himself yet again.

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The crisis is pretty simple: California's broke because tax revenues have declined since the real estate market went bust, and spending hasn't. It would be a lot simpler, of course, if Californians hadn't booted Arnold's predecessor, Gray Davis, out of office last time the state went broke. It would be simpler if Arnold hadn't gotten himself elected on the promise of fixing the state's finances and if he weren't spending more money than Gray Davis when he was brought to the humiliation of a recall. It would be simpler if Arnold's success were posited on simply increasing the efficiency of state government rather than on expanding its reach with a series of popular bills and measures on stem-cell research, carbon emissions, infrastructure repair, and prison construction -- if his instinct, as a man and as a politician, weren't always to go big. It would be simpler if his two latest big-time legislative initiatives, concerning health care and water, weren't coming into play at the exact moment he is declaring a fiscal emergency, and if he weren't so determined to keep pushing them, fiscal emergency be damned. It would be simpler if all his meetings were like the meetings he had with the advocates and the big-city mayors and all the different groups he met with in the conference room, where he was able to say he looked at the deficit "as a bump in the road and the health-care bill as something lasting forever," and to compare himself to Roosevelt, who kept on going big straight through the Great Depression. It would be simpler if the success of his health-care and water bills didn't depend on the other meetings he was having that week, the one-on-one meetings with members of the California legislature, like Don Perata, head of the Senate Democratic caucus. And it would have been a lot simpler if Perata, in particular, weren't so fond of the Kabuki.

What's the Kabuki? Well, it's an Arnold word, for sure -- you haven't heard the words "the Kabuki" unless you hear them in his Austrian accent. See, the Kabuki was one of the things he didn't know about when he first became governor. "I've always been able to see ahead to the finish line when I'm negotiating," he told me one day. "It's always been that way. I see it, and then I want to get there. I get impatient. In business, that's not a problem. But in politics, a lot of people need to do the Kabuki, the song and dance. They feel cheated if you don't let them. So now if you want to do the Kabuki, okay, you can do the Kabuki. We'll get to the finish line eventually. It will just take longer."

Now, as it happens, the first time I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was getting out of a meeting with Don Perata, and Perata had started the meeting doing the Kabuki, telling Arnold that it was not the right time for water and not the right time for health care, either, at least not until he saw the budget. Why did Arnold think this was the Kabuki? Well, for one thing, he thought Perata was playing for leverage because he wanted to be the man on water, and the only way he could do that was to hold out on health care. And then, for another . . . well, California's health-care system was broken, right? Then Arnold was going to fix it with a bill that not only was going to make sure that every single Californian had health insurance but that would also serve as a model for the national legislation sure to come. And California was drying up, right? Then Arnold was going to call for the issuance of bonds financing the construction of a new network of dams and canals. He had already seen the finish line on both these issues, and he was sure that he was on the side of history, even if history hadn't yet had the chance to take place. Hell, history was what he was offering Perata, and anyone else he wanted to get on his side. In the face of such belief, such optimism, such rightness, such certainty, what objection could there be but . . . the Kabuki?

Of course, I didn't know any of this at the time. I hadn't even heard him talk about the Kabuki yet. All I saw was him and Perata standing together, shaking hands -- Perata a little stout, packed into a sharply tailored pinstripe suit, the thatch of hair atop his rubicund crown as blond as shredded wheat, and Arnold as always Arnold, wearing a gray suit with peak lapels, an open white shirt, and black boots emblazoned with the gubernatorial seal. And all I heard was Perata asking him if he'd flown to Sacramento that morning in the Gulfstream, and him telling Perata . . . but wait a second, did he just say that? Did he just say, "Yeah -- and guess who was on it? Gray Davis. I wanted to talk to him about the budget." Because if he did, he was definitely giving Perata shit. Oh, he was telling the truth, too, but he was telling it in such a way that the truth sounded like a Gray Davis joke, a budget joke, at a moment when Perata was using the budget to threaten his legislative agenda. And then, as I was standing there trying to parse the shit he was giving Perata, Arnold looked at me, a person he'd never met, and said, "It was a good meeting. You should have been there."

He had gotten away with it his entire life, you see -- he'd gotten away with the imposition of his will. What he had in excess was one of the things the world had historically found unpalatable -- the Teutonic will -- and his genius had been to cast that will as a comic invention, and therefore an American one. He never had to hide his will or his ambition; he simply had to make his will and ambition an essential part of being Arnold, and then turn being Arnold into the performance of his lifetime.

You've heard of free will, of course. Well, with Arnold, there was freed will, and he used it, in the words of his chief of staff, "to visualize success in a way that doesn't visualize obstacles." Hell, when he came to the United States in '68, he didn't speak any English, and visualization was what he had, a talent for seeing the next thing. He visualized success in bodybuilding and then attained it by bending his body and then the entire sport to his will. And then he saw the next thing: "I heard that Charles Bronson was making a million dollars a movie," he told me. "That was a very big deal to an immigrant -- a million dollars a movie. So I went to see a Charles Bronson movie. And I said, I can do that. And people said, No you can't -- have you ever heard yourself? And I said, I can do that. And then I made a million dollars a movie, so the next thing became keeping the million. And that's how I got into business."

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And that's pretty much how he became the governor of California as well. "I knew the time would come, and when the [Gray Davis] recall happened, it was handed to me. It was like God said, Hey, you want to circumvent the Republican primaries, because you're not conservative enough for them? Here's the recall. I was absolutely convinced that I would become governor, no matter what. And so I jumped in there. And I had the will to do it. When I campaigned in 2003, people said, You don't have the experience. I said, There's a storehouse of experience up in Sacramento and look at the shape the state is in. So it couldn't be experience that makes the state in good shape. What it needs is the will. The will to go and make tough decisions and the right decisions. I have the will, is what I told the people. And that's exactly what I have. I have the will."

But then, he had more than that, didn't he? There have been governors who have been rich, and there have been governors who have been famous, but there has never been a governor anywhere, ever, as rich and as famous as Arnold Schwarzenegger was when he took office in 2004. There has never been a governor who kept one of the swords from his role as Conan the Barbarian in a glass case in his office, or hung Andy Warhol's annihilatingly large blue painting of his wife on the wall behind his desk; never been a governor who was not only an icon but who possesses what one of his staffers calls a "significant private collection" of his own iconography, which he installed in the phalanx of offices housing his administration so that anyone entering them would instantly have the Arnold experience; never been a governor who not only had a persona but was willing to make use of it the way a sausage maker makes use of a hog; never been a governor who, when he said, "Well, it's all show business, anyway," knew exactly what he was talking about and had a proven record of moving people by the millions. He was a governor who never had to worry about people showing up, who never had to worry about people returning his call, who never felt uncomfortable being watched, since he knew that audience means opportunity.

He was a governor of and for the people, sure -- he opened his office up, he invited people in, he went out into the state and saw as many Californians as he could -- but he was also, from the beginning, the governor of crowds, and so in 2005, when his attempt to rein in spending was blocked by entrenched interests in the California legislature, he decided to go around the legislators and the lobbyists altogether. They wanted to do the Kabuki? He would show them the Kabuki. He would hold a special election so that the crowds that lined up to see him could line up and vote directly for the four initiatives he put on the ballot. The legislators were against him? The crowds would help him redraw legislative districts. The unions were against him? The crowds would help him restrict their political spending. The teachers were against him? The crowds would help him curb teacher tenure. . . .

He didn't get away with it. For the first time in his life, he didn't get away with the imposition of his will, because now for the first time in his life, his will wasn't sublimated by his performance -- wasn't funny and wasn't free -- but rather tethered to the interests of party and power. He was the Republican governor of the Democratic state of California, and the Republican party had tried to claim him -- they tried to mold him and turn the Republican governor of California into a real Republican -- and by the time of the special election, they succeeded all too well. He lost. All four of his ballot initiatives were comprehensively rejected, and for the first time in his life, he was comprehensively rejected as well, his approval ratings falling into the thirties. He had campaigned almost as a fantasy figure who could transcend partisanship and make California as big as he was. Now his will had been exposed as a will to power, his ambition had been exposed as partisan ambition, and the creation at the heart not only of who he was but of who he'd become -- Arnold -- had been exposed as just another Republican bully.

There are two bronze busts in the big conference room where he has his meetings. The busts belong to him, of course; they're part of his private collection, and therefore part of the Arnold experience, and therefore they represent -- and are intended to represent -- the polarities of Republican politics. One is Lincoln, the great American martyr, staring grimly ahead with fixed moral purpose. The other is Reagan. He's got his head tilted back, his eyes narrowed winsomely, and whatever else you may want to say about him, he's nobody's martyr -- he's laughing, no matter who's getting screwed.

And that's Arnold. It's not that he doesn't feel your pain; it's that he, like Reagan, doesn't feel his own. He's either the happiest man in American politics or the happiest man in America, period. He makes governing look easy because for him it is easy -- because he loves his job, and because he's determined to practice a politics that rises above politics. Like Reagan, he's not just optimistic, not just confident, not just joyful; he's figured out that optimism, confidence, and joy are what people need from him, and he's incorporated them so deeply into the performance of his job that it doesn't matter if he is performing or not -- they're who he is, and who he is turns out to be both an incredibly narrow and an incredibly expansive concept. Here are some quotes culled from a single interview with David Crane, a friend of the governor's since the late seventies and now an advisor on economic policy: "He's the least angry person I know." "He's superoptimistic by nature." "He seems to like everything he does." "I've never seen him down." "He's like a very normal person that you meet in business." "He's anything but normal, and in that sense his life has not changed very much since he became governor." "He enjoys his normal, not-normal life."

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There was one time he experienced guilt -- as in, one time in his entire life. That's what he said one night, on his plane. He was talking about how his job continually surprised him and that one of the first surprises was how tough it was on his wife and his four children. "There is no relief," he said, "and so how do you make your family buy into that? How do you make your children understand? I never knew what guilt was. I never had any guilt. That was the first time I felt it. I felt bad that I couldn't accomplish both -- pay full attention to the state and full attention to the family. It was frustrating to me, and to some degree I was angry about it -- that I couldn't do it. Now, again, I've found a better way."

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The better way? The better way is the plane itself. He bought a share in it, and he uses it to commute almost every day back and forth between his office in Sacramento and his home down in Brentwood. It's guilt-free -- not only does he pay for it with his own money, he's also figured out some kind of charitable arrangement for his carbon offset credits. Still, it's hard to say what's more extraordinary: the fact that he's only experienced guilt once in his life or the fact that he bought into a plane to surmount it. And now that you know the parable of the plane, how do you think the other parable -- the parable of the disastrous 2005 special election -- ends? It was the first failure of his life, after all. Do you think he listened to the people on his staff who told him not to apologize? Do you think he martyred himself to the partisanship and the stubbornness and the political willfulness that had done him in? Or do you think he found a better way?

On the grounds of the capitol, twenty feet outside Arnold's office, stands a tent made of beige canvas. Though technically and legally out of doors, it has four walls, a pitched roof, and is about the size of a small hunting cabin; it is outfitted with a heater, rattan furniture, a glass table, several bowls filled with California almonds, and an array of ashtrays. The tent is to Arnold's need to smoke cigars in comfort what his plane is to his need to see his children at night: It is a better way, clearly, but it is also a better way that only he could have gotten away with. It feels sort of royal, but it's also a symbol of his determined inclusiveness, because the tent has become the place where legislators, lobbyists, businessmen, and activists of all stripes get a chance to meet with Arnold and his Democratic, lesbian, cigar-smoking chief of staff.

I'm not trying to court or create controversy here, by the way. I've just never heard Susan Kennedy referred to as anything but Arnold's Democratic, lesbian, cigar-smoking chief of staff. Indeed, that he has a Democratic, lesbian, cigar-smoking chief of staff is part of the story -- the story of how he responded to the special election of 2005 and the first failure of his life. His Republican staff was part of his failure, so here's what he did: He authorized his wife to find a more Democratic one, or at least a more heterodox one. Maria Shriver found, among others, Susan Kennedy (no relation), who had worked for Gray Davis and had watched, in her words, "a Democratic governor torn limb from limb by the Democratic majority." She was out of politics and as disillusioned with the prospect of winning as she was with the reality of losing. She was the better way because she believed -- because she needed to believe -- that Arnold was the better way. She was the better way because she believed that California needed Arnold as much as she did and that America needed Arnold as much as California did. She was the better way because she believed that she saw in Arnold what the previous staff had missed -- "his limitlessness" -- and set about rooting his politics in that.

How in the world does a governor of California base his politics on the idea that he has no limits? Well, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, you simply take the trick that's worked for you your entire life -- the realization of your will through the sublimation of your will -- and adapt it to the realities of state politics. You state your ambition by taking on issues that Washington won't touch, and then you turn those issues into bills by opening your smoking tent to people of all parties and letting them do the Kabuki if that's what they want to do. The health-care bill, for example -- the health-care bill is a national bill, or at least a model for one. "That's why," as Arnold says, "the CEOs who have come to the table to negotiate are national CEOs, and the labor leaders who have come to the table to negotiate are national labor leaders." And yet if the bill becomes law in California, it will become law without the support of a single Republican in the legislature. Indeed, two weeks before Christmas the Republican governor of California had a better chance of getting lobbyists from the tobacco industry to support his bill than he did legislators from his own party -- and he was planning to tax the tobacco industry in order to pay for the bill.

Okay, the tobacco lobbyists were never going to support the bill. But then, as Susan Kennedy said, "We don't need them to support the bill. All we need is them not spending $150 million to kill it." And so that's why they were invited to the tent. That's why they were offered the Arnold experience. He was still going to try taxing them, and they were still going to be against being taxed. "But this was probably the first time in history they were asked their opinion," he said after the meeting. "They're always considered the enemies, the villains, they create all the illnesses. But here they're being given a chance to contribute to health care. It's like us bringing in the oil companies when we passed our bill to roll back greenhouse-gas emissions. You know, environmentalists and oil companies never sit together at any event, celebrating anything. But they were all sitting there, car manufacturers, environmentalists, oil-company executives. Because we included them."

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And because they all, at one time or another, came to Arnold's tent.

Take a look at a map of California. It's pretty big, right? And now think of how many people live there. That's a lot of damned people -- 12 percent of the U.S. population. And yet as large as California looks on a map, as large and pivotal a role as it plays in the electoral college, as large as its legends loom in the American psyche: Nowhere is it bigger than it is in the offices of the Arnold administration. There, it's not a state at all; it's a "nation-state," it's a "country unto itself," it's "as big as France." Hell, you know how big it is? It's as big as Arnold himself, because he's as big as it.

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And so when Arnold has a week like he had the week before Christmas . . . well, the week started well enough, indeed historically enough, with the passage of the health-care bill he'd been negotiating in the tent for, oh, nine months or so, a first step toward guaranteeing health-care insurance for every man, woman, and child in the state. It was a party-line vote in the California Assembly -- all Democrats voting yes and every single member of his party, the Republicans, voting no -- and yes, the bill that was passed proposed paying for the expansion of health-care insurance by increasing the state tax on cigarettes. That was on a Monday. But then: Perata. He was offering no guarantees that he would bring the bill to the Senate floor until he could see the budget, until he could see how the governor could expand the state's role in the health-care system while at the same time cutting existing programs. And then: Núñez. Assembly leader Fabian Núñez was instrumental in the passage of the health-care bill, but now he was saying of the other bill the governor was pushing, the water bill, "Water's dead." And then, on Wednesday, Bush. Well, really, Bush's EPA, which announced that it would not permit California and sixteen other states to set their own stringent standards for greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill that had stood as the best example of what Arnold could do for the United States from the state of California had been declared moot by an administration that had been able to do so little for the United States from Washington, D.C.

And so when Arnold has a week like that, well, he's still Arnold, isn't he? He's always Arnold, and so after he issues a statement saying that California is going to sue the EPA, he has to go back to working on his one stated goal: "to fix the state." As a goal, it sounds almost modest, almost reasonable, except that

being Arnold, he sees it as an opportunity to revisit most of the same spending issues that he tried to address in the 2005 special election. And since all his goals are only as modest as he is, they become part of the ongoing comedy of his limitlessness. To fix the state, he has to fix the country; to fix the country, he has to fix the country's politics; to fix the country's politics, he has to bend politics to his will; to bend politics to his will, he has to relinquish the hope of bending politics to his will; to relinquish the hope of bending politics to his will, he has to be willing to lose; to be willing to lose, he has to know that in the end he's going to win. No wonder his staff wonders if his example can translate to the rest of the country. And no wonder his Democratic, lesbian, cigar-smoking chief of staff says, "It will be the biggest tragedy in the history of American politics" if it doesn't.

In celebration of Christmas, there was a potluck lunch at the capitol. Members of Arnold's staff cooked for one another, and then -- because they were members of Arnold's staff -- judged one another, rating each dish. It was a celebration and a competition, and when Arnold stood up to speak after being introduced by Susan Kennedy as "the greatest governor in the history of California," he said he liked the annual event because it was a competition: "I like it when there are winners, and I especially like it when there are losers."

And then he called an aide to his side and whispered a question in his ear: "What is his name?"

"Johnny Masterson," the aide answered. And then Arnold called Johnny Masterson to come up and stand with him near the Christmas tree, introducing him as "my new cochief of staff. Johnny's my buddy, because he is working out. Would you do something for us, Johnny? Would you flex for us for just a second. . . ."

Johnny was a small man with dark hair, a mail-room employee with Down's syndrome. Gamely and shyly, he flexed, and then, in an impulsive gesture, he threw his arms around his boss. But he wasn't big enough to hold him, his arms weren't long enough to encompass him, and Arnold suddenly looked huge, with Johnny's small hands clutching at the wings of his shoulders and Johnny's face pressed against his chest. And I thought: Okay, he's gotten away with this, too. He's gotten away with not knowing Johnny's name, he's gotten away with pretending he did, he's gotten away with the performance of compassion, and this was why he was good at politics. And then I looked at him, and I looked at them, and realized he'd gotten away with nothing. The disparity of scale he experienced with Johnny Masterson was what he experienced with just about everyone his entire life. It wasn't what made him transcendent; it was what he had to transcend, and now that's exactly what he went about doing, with the sheer size of his embrace.